


10. They Look so Pretty When They Bleed

by Knitwritezombie (Missa_G)



Series: Care and Feeding 'Verse [11]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Gen, Honeycutt just wants to be a good medic dammit, Kinda, Medical Procedures, clones caring for clones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26964991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missa_G/pseuds/Knitwritezombie
Summary: Prompt: trail of bloodHoneycutt leaves the showers after a normal shipboard day and ends up following a trail of blood.
Series: Care and Feeding 'Verse [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956823
Comments: 1
Kudos: 63
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	10. They Look so Pretty When They Bleed

Honeycutt left the troopers ‘fresher dressed in clean blacks, a towel draped around his neck despite having taken a sonic rather than a water shower. He liked to save those rations for after heavy casualty events or having to deal with the Commander or General, both of whom saw medical treatment as an option rather than a necessity. After an unexceptional ship-board duty day, he’d seen no reason to waste one of the small luxuries they had aboard the Negotiator.

He stopped as he saw blood droplets leading out of the ‘fresher. They were large enough to be concerning, but spaced far enough apart to indicate the trooper bleeding was still mobile (he assumed it was a trooper; Kenobi was known to use the troops showers on occasion, as was Cody, though they both had private facilities according to their rank). It was human, or near human, which really didn’t help him narrow down the possibilities given the crew complement of the Negotiator. 

However, as Honeycutt rounded the corner, there was a small pool where whoever it was had clearly paused to lean against the bulkhead. 

Honeycutt knelt and touched his fingers to the pool. It wasn’t tacky, so it hadn’t been long, though the size of the pool made it difficult to know exactly how long. He ducked back into the fresher to retrieve the med-kit he kept there, then called for a droid to clean up after him as he followed the trail. 

The further he got from the ‘fresher and the troop barracks, the more irritated the medic became. Muttering under his breath about idiotic brothers too stupid to see to their injuries, and dumbass Jedi too stubborn to realize they couldn’t rely on the Force for everything, he spied larger collections of drops every so often as his prey paused more frequently. Honeycutt couldn’t be too far behind.

The trail eventually led to the closed door of a room Honeycutt hadn’t previously encountered. They weren’t far from the port bridge, which Honeycutt had little reason to visit, given its function as starfighter ops. The door slid open at his approach, which told him it wasn’t a secured room. The lights inside were low, and though there wasn’t any dust, the air smelled fairly stale, as if the door hadn’t been opened in a while (despite the air circulators on the ship). So it wasn’t a frequently used space.

Honeycutt stepped inside, and the door slid shut behind him. He couldn’t see the other occupant in the low light and amongst the furniture, but he could hear breathing. 

Fighting down his irritation at having been led through the ship by someone who obviously didn’t want to seek out medical treatment, the medic tried instead for the calm confidence that had been trained into him. “You may as well come out now,” he said into the room. “I’ve got a medkit and I can help.”

The breathing grew ragged and Honeycutt heard a soft sniffle. Kriff it, it was probably a shiny. They were far enough into the war with high enough casualties, that the Kaminoans had decided seven was old enough to ship the new batches out to the front lines. The first clones, those who had volunteered to serve at the First Battle of Geonosis under General Yoda had been 10, and in the first wave of troops to ship out, it had seemed unthinkable that anyone under 9 would be sent to the front. But need and flash training meant that as soon as they were deemed emotionally stable enough and physically able, the shinies were getting their assignments. 

Honeycutt wasn’t exactly happy about it, and he wasn’t sure he agreed with the long-neck’s definition of emotionally stable, but no one had asked him (and he knew that at least General Kenobi also wasn’t pleased with the situation). All he could do was put them back together again when they got so shook up they started to break down. 

He set the kit down on the table and palmed the lights up to half, hoping to dispel some of the shadows and find his quarry. Sure enough, as the lights came up, the sounds of a body shifting came from the other side of the table, and Honeycutt slowly made his way around, sliding the med-kit along the top of the table as he moved.

Slumped against a wall was a vod in blacks, knees drawn up to his chest, a swatch of fabric of some kind hastily tied around his thigh, badly stained. “I didn’t mean to, I swear,” the kid babbled as Honeycutt approached. “I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, please don’t send me back, I didn’t mean it, I-” the kid was panicking. 

“Hey,” Honeycutt knelt down next to the clearly shiny trooper and softened his tone. “It’s fine. No one is getting sent anywhere. Why don’t you tell me what happened.” He laid out his kit and popped it open, double checking the security setting on the blaster on top before setting it aside and reaching for disposable gloves. “What’s your name, kid?” he asked. 

“Dwight,” the trooper answered. “I-I was cleaning my gear, and, and,” he stammered. 

“Okay. Hey, let’s take a deep breath, yeah?” Honeycutt suggested, wanting to get the trooper calmed down. “Let’s breathe together, you ready. Breathe in,” he coached, drawing in an exaggerated breath of his own, counting to five silently in his head. “Now out.” He guided Dwight through a few more repetitions until it seemed like he’d gotten himself back under control. “Good. Now, let me see your leg,” he ordered.  
Honeycutt helped Dwight straighten out his leg. “I was cleaning my gear,” Dwight said again, calmer. “One of the other guys in the squad dropped something and startled me. I stabbed myself,” he whispered this last part.  
Hells, Honeycutt thought. He really needed to go to Cody about the rates of trauma responses he was seeing in the younger vod. “Let’s see.” Honeycutt unwrapped the makeshift bandage. Dwight had pulled out the knife he’d been using, and the wound was still bleeding, but looked like it had started to clot around the edges, and he was conscious, so he hadn’t hit anything vital.

“You got lucky, kid. You missed the femoral artery by about a centimeter.” Honeycutt pulled out sutures and bandages and got to work stitching up the wound. 

“Am I going to be sent back?” Dwight asked. “I know I messed up sir, but I didn’t mean to.”

“You’re not going to get sent back to Kamino,” Honeycutt promised as he worked. “Not for this, or anything else if I have any say in it,” he grumbled. He hated the Kaminoan practice of reconditioning any soldier they felt was inadequate in any way. It only reminded the clones that they were property to be disposed of, and not seen as sentient individuals (by their makers, anyway). He really needed to talk to Cody.

Honeycutt finished patching the kid up and sent him back to his bunk to rest. The wound would heal clean in a few days with bacta bandages, and he ordered Dwight to check in at medical every day to get the bandages changed. 

He cleaned up the trash and repacked his kit, wrapping the soiled scrap of blacks the kid had used as a bandage into the towel he’d had around his neck. He dropped both down the nearest incinerator chute as he made his way down the corridor in search of Commander Cody.


End file.
